Illinois’s Largest Health Insurer Won’t Pay for Hospital Errors

Jacob Goldstein in Wall Street Journal Health Blog This time, it’s Health Care Service Corp., which covers 12.4 million people under four Blue Cross plans including Illinois Blue Cross, the Chicago Tribune reports. Early this year Aetna and WellPoint joined the no-pay bandwagon. Many hospitals have already stopped billing for serious errors known as “never events,” such as leaving something inside a patient during surgery, or giving a patient the wrong blood type. In Massachusetts, Blue Cross and several state agencies recently published a list of errors they wouldn’t pay for. California’s considering joining several other states that have already passed laws to deny payment in such cases.